Shades
by Designation
Summary: Laughter echoes faintly down the hallway, giving me hope even as it mocks everything that we’ve become. Everything is lost but life – but that’s the only thing that’s truly gone, isn’t it? Ha ha. References to Grave Danger.


**Shades  
****by  
****Kel**

**Disclaimer:** I claim no ownership to CSI, or its characters, or anything along those lines – and to top it all off, I gain no profit from this fiction. Unless you count reviews.

**Author's Note:** This is a follow-up piece (the last follow-up piece, I believe) to _Unclean, Undisturbed_ and _Peripheral Vision_ – though in my humble opinion, it would stand alone just as well.

Rating for general darkness and use of a couple unpleasant terms. (But could someone please let me know if they think the rating's too harsh?)

Thanks go out to everybetty for the helpful comments and support. You rock!

* * *

"Grissom?" 

I glance up from the haphazard pile of papers to face the source of the shadow that darkens my office doorway. My pen rests loosely between my fingers, as I paused in skimming the topmost form.

"Yes, Nick?"

"Got a minute?"

I can't stop myself from being still grateful to nod at that.

Nick steps into the office, turning to click the door shut, ever so softly.

Actions on both our parts which taste of the many ways our world has changed. In our job, fingerprints prevail. Come first and always, like air.

Furrows on my part, identifying a time when I'd thought my minutes with Nick had run out.

Ridges that outline a harsh reality, his aversion to noise, the weight of screams in dead silence.

Fingerprints. Reminders. Death - strung through us all, past to present to future, like fine crimson thread.

Still though, as water washes out dye, I had thought the colour of the thread was fading. The ant bites have faded from Nick's skin, and the desperation has faded from Nick's eyes, both only to be seen in our collective nightmares. Nick has returned to work, is solving cases just as always. That's what I'm expecting to hear about – Nick's latest case.

I watch as he eases himself back to lean against the closed door.

"You saw everything I went through, right? Well, enough, anyway."

That, I wasn't expecting.

"And I was thinking. Some of the worst moments of my life are - were, on video." Web feeds from plexiglass coffins, diaries of psychotic stalkers. "And you've seen them. Saw me at rock bottom."

"Nick, why –" _Why are you bringing this up? Why are you doing this to me?_ Selfish around Nick, always. Nothing to give, really. All I have within me is to restrain, to hold things back.

"Tell me something about you. Please. I need –"

Ah, yes. I think I can see those bites, now. Because somewhere along the line, the cracks that have always been underneath the surface of Nick became bites, and it has taken some serious looking to notice their longevity.

I can feel him clawing the air, trying to grasp something, desperate not to be alone — and he had seemed so serene one step back.

In some ways, I know that Nick is just as private as I am. And I couldn't imagine how I'd react if my skin were to be peeled away as much; as publicly as Nick's.

Everything changes. It seems I do have something to give, after all.

Always surprises with Nick, because one more thing I never expected was the ease with which the words escape my mouth.

"My mother was deaf. Otosclerosis. It's hereditary. And unpredictable. I've had surgery for it – it used to sneak up on me. I'd have moments when everything would drop away, sometimes even in the middle of cases, and I'd just flounder. Horrified that I could miss some –"

I suck in a sharp breath. I've opened the floodgates, however briefly, and the cold of the water is shocking in its intensity.

"Floundering. Yeah," Nick rasps, taking in air in shaky gulps for his part. "You can't do anything but wait for it to take you, rape you, end you, and it's so hard to breathe –"

Nick's laughing, now. Out of the blue, and I can understand that, as well. Words flash through my head at the speed of . . . sound. _Twilight Zone, dear God we've just stepped into the Twilight Zone, because this is sudden, this isn't **us**, we don't **sound **like this, and I don't –_

Of course, if everything is changing around us, how can I expect to stay the same?

"This is . . . rather uncharacteristic."

Dear Christ, did I just say that? I'm expecting him to storm out now, like I've slapped him. Or crawl away. Like I've sucker-punched him.

And this _must_ be the Twilight Zone, or at least our version, because nothing in this scenario even resembles normalcy. Not my words, nor his, nor anything in this God-forsaken conversation.

"Come on, Grissom, you can say it. This is just fucking _crazy_."

Crazy, yeah. World's gone crazy. I nod.

"I'm gonna . . . gotta get back to the case."

And then he leaves the room, shedding the desperation as he steps through the doorway and out of this little bubble we've created.

For long moments after he's gone, I stare dumbly at the papers still laid out in front of me. My fingers still rest just underneath the line I was reading. But it's Hebrew now, so what's the point? I don't speak Hebrew. Certainly can't read it.

A small voice speaks up in the back of my mind at this notion. _Come on, Gil. If this is the Twilight Zone, shouldn't you know what it says anyway? Twilight Zone, Twilight . . ._

"Grissom?"

God, this isn't twilight, it's Groundhog Day. I'm certain of it.

"Earth to Grissom."

Oh, right. No. It's Greg, this time.

"Is Nick okay?"

Greg _does_ come to my office, sometimes.

"Gris?"

That's normal enough.

"Are you alright?"

Am I?

"_Grissom._"

"Yes, Greg?"

"What just happened?"

So something _did_ happen.

And here I thought I was just losing it.

"I'm not sure."

It's already lost, isn't it?

Laughter echoes faintly down the hallway, giving me hope even as it mocks everything that we've become. Everything is lost but life – but that's the only thing that's truly gone, isn't it? Ha ha.

Greg turns to face the noise, appearing to soak it in, grateful and awed. "I don't know how he does it," he says, turning back to me. Tipping his head slightly to the corridor outside the bubble. The juxtaposition is astonishing. Nick, and Warrick from the sounds of it, are laughing uproariously at some little joke – hardly professional, but no one would begrudge them of it.

Greg shakes his head and gives a precariously placed smile that doesn't go well with his next words at all; "If I were in his shoes, I'd probably be walking around dead."

"No, you wouldn't," I respond, probably a little too forcefully for casual conversation.

He doesn't flinch, just glances over his shoulder briefly, sad and resigned. "Look, Grissom, I– "

But I'm tired of looking. I'm tired of thinking of all the ways this could have gone, all the ways I could have saved Nick sooner, all the ways I could have saved him at all.

"No, Greg." No more. "If you were in Nick's shoes, you'd _be Nick._ You'd have gone through everything he did – Walter Gordon, Nigel Crane, Kristi Hopkins – it happened to _Nick,_ Greg, not you. Not Warrick, not Catherine, not me. Nick. It went down _one way_ – we can't turn back the clock, and there are no what-ifs."

"I just wish– "

"_Stop_ just wishing."

_Just stop, Greg. Show me how to just stop._

But Greg just looks at me, with that not-quite-unhurt but ready to listen and learn expression that he grafted onto himself sometime ago, when I wasn't paying enough attention. Probably has nothing to say to that, I suppose.

Waiting for me, perhaps, to show him how to navigate this particular scene.

Too bad I don't know that any more than he does.

There are a few things, though. . . .

I could let him in on secrets far enough removed – buried, shall we say? – that they could be straight from this Twilight Zone, this messed up universe that he doesn't even know he's in.

Like how Nick really _is_ walking around dead.

I think he died a long time ago.

**End.**


End file.
